


Audacity

by supernatasha



Series: Charred Metal and Hope [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Future Fic, Rough Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 02:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernatasha/pseuds/supernatasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya Stark, after the Great War of  Westeros, finally seeks out her bull-headed bastard.<br/>The last story of Charred Metal and Hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Audacity

The first time she sees him again, broad shoulders and shaggy black hair and fire-blackened hands, he's drinking down a mug of ale as though he was a man dying of thirst. Long desperate gulps, the tendons in his neck expanding and contracting with each swallow.

She studies him from her perch in the rafters. Arya has no doubt the rumors must have reached his ears: the Stark on the wolf, the Stark who changes face, the Stark returned to Westeros with the _Khaleesi_ , the Stark who slew every white walker in her way. And yet he is here. Not on the road to find her, not mourning, not asking. Drinking ale. She feels a peculiar ache that she has to struggle to force down.

 _Stupid bull-head,_ she thinks, narrowing her eyes.

Almost as if he’s heard, the blacksmith looks up toward the rafters. For a second, less than that, their eyes meet. Then Arya’s gone, into the darkness. She sees his eyes scan the rafters, blinking, head turning rapidly from side to side.

She knows where to go, where he will instinctively follow her to and she waits there for him.

 

He enters the forge, confused. The flame in his hearth has burned down low to embers, casting an eerie vague glow over his tools. Arya waits for him to close the door behind him and take a single step forward before revealing herself, melting out of the shadows.

"You selfish bastard, never once sought me out," she sneers in a low voice coated with venom and hatred. Her knees are tensed, prepared to strike.

"You accuse me?" he throws back instantly, as if he had already memorized what he wanted to say, as if he had thought those words over and over again in his mind, spikes and thorns rising with every syllable. "Traitorous bitch. Runs off into the wild without a glance backward."

_He has the audacity to blame me?_

It should surprise her, the way he's prepared to defend himself and challenge her, as if he's been thinking about it too, practicing what he wants to say. But then again, nothing surprises her anymore really. It does anger her, stoking a fire in her belly she's been harboring since the day she left the Brotherhood, a fire that had simmered down into smoke and embers that has been reignited.

She snarls and leaps at him, both arms outstretched. Gendry grunts in pain when she connects, knocking him sideways off his feet. He feels Arya's lithe form on him, but before she can get a clear shot, he swats at her with the back of his hand. She lands beside him hard, breath leaving her body in a huff.

He gets to his feet, dazed. But she can move faster than him. A moment later, she's on his back, clinging with a deadly force he couldn't have foreseen. Her arms lock around his throat in a choke hold, fists pressing into the tender flesh.

The lack of oxygen makes Gendry thrash about, grasping behind him but unable to get a hold. She digs her nails into his neck, leaving bright red half-moons leaking with blood. He charges backward with a mighty force until Arya slams against the wall, her spine striking the concrete with a sickening thud.

She lands on her knees on a broken sword, feeling the metal slash through the fabric of her breeches. Her muscles relax in one leg where they should've been coiled. Warmth gushes out of the wound, sending a jolt of fury through Arya. She hisses through her teeth, more shock than hurt.

_He dares to make me bleed?_

Feral and provoked, she launches herself toward him where he's kneeling to catch his breath. He falls flat on his back and Arya takes the opportunity to sit square on his chest. With a guttural sound, she pulls back a fist and lets loose to the side of his face. Her first hit opens a gash under his eyebrow. The second sends his face flying into the dusty floor.

Before the third can connect, he swiftly throws his head forward: a move reckless but successful. His thick skull hits Arya in the mouth, splitting open her lip. She gasps and rolls off him, temporarily winded by the headbutt.

Gendry reaches out blindly, blood sticking one eye shut, and feels for a weapon: his hammer, tongs, scrap metal, anything. Before he can reach anything, there is something sharp at his throat.

Needle.

The game is over. She's bored of playing.

"Who was I to look back at?" she demands standing above him, voice hoarse. "A bull-headed boy?"

"And was I meant to seek out mi'lady in the woods of Winterfell or the streets of Braavos?" he replies, and lapses into coughing up phlegm and blood.

"Don't call me that," she says, and there is no longer an edge of ice to her voice, only lassitude.

He licks his bruised lips and whispers instead, "Arya."

Her name rolling off his tongue- she is surprised for a moment when he doesn't suffocate with the burden of it in his mouth. She tries not to think about all the years she’d waited for him to utter those two syllables, how she had imagined and fantasized, mumbling and screaming and declaring.

"Gendry," she dares her own throat to say, to try the word and its contours, to feel the thrill in her veins of saying it aloud at last.  
They hang in the warm air of the forge, two names spoken by weary bones and parched throats.

She lets Needle drop, clattering to the floor and stands there, vulnerable. If she wanted to kill him, he’d be dead already. She doesn’t. If Gendry wanted to kill her, he could reach out for the sword and run her through with it. He doesn’t. Arya ignores the twinge in her bleeding knee and kneels down over him. With her sleeve, she cleans the blood off his face, feeling him tremble beneath her, wince whenever she brushed over open wounds. The cloth becomes soaked through, crimson and heavy.

“I asked about you,” he croaks, each exhale touching Arya’s hair. “I asked everyone I met, everywhere I went. I asked them about the young Stark sister, I asked them about a girl with grey eyes and brown hair, I asked about a boy with grey eyes and brown hair. I never stopped asking. They said you were dead, married to a Bolton, that you’d become a direwolf, you were at the Wall with your brothers, you’d joined the Khaleesi’s ranks, you rode dragons over the Narrow Sea, you fought the Others with dragonglass embedded in your fists.”

He stops reciting the list to catch his breath and Arya can still feel the phantom weight of obsidian buried in her knuckles. If he looks, he'll find the scars. The memory is bile and she doesn’t let Gendry speak anymore of the past, presses her lips to his.

He tastes of blood, salt and iron and sweat. He tastes of dust and charred metal and hope. His tongue is like the godswood in summer, blossoming and thriving, and she is the traveler who hasn’t rested under shade in miles and now all she wants to do is rest and rest.

She has waited for this kiss all her life.

Gendry takes her into his arms, welcoming first, then desperate. He sits up, battling for dominance, and succeeds in getting Arya on her back. The crumpled bit of an armor digs into her thigh and she squirms under him. With a growl, she flips him back without releasing his lips and this time he knows to stay down.

They pull apart for a moment, and her eyes roam over his face, cuts and bumps that she’s inflicted upon him in wrath. She can see where the blood is beginning to dry and crust on his skin, where it still flows from exposed gashes. She wonders if her face looks any better. Despite that, he wears a serene smile and she cannot help pressing her lips against every inch of that bruised face.

Gendry waits patiently for her lips to return to his, and he sighs with pleasure when they do. That sigh, into her mouth, is what decides it for Arya. Her weight settles over his body, straddling as she slowly, painstakingly pulls his tunic up. He grunts with effort as she slides it over his head and she frowns. Her fingers work their way down his chest and sculpted stomach to his breeches. She can feel he’s already hard under her and it delights her.

She wants this only for herself, him all for herself. Fierce and protective, her hips grind against Gendry until he groans and murmurs her name. She doesn’t give him the chance to entirely slip off his breeches before she stands and undoes her own clothes. She wears nothing underneath them and Gendry’s eyes widen when she lets her tunic and breeches crumple to the floor beside Needle.

“I, y-you, Arya, beautiful,” he stammers, incapable of more coherency and this too elicits a smile. She knows she does not have a child’s body anymore, curves and softness where bones had once jutted from her skin. She can see him pausing at each of her scars, every healed over wound, and she takes pride in this.

When she first lowers herself onto him, Gendry moans and closes his eyes.

“No,” she purrs, “Open your eyes. I want to look into them,” and he does, the intense blue visible even in dim orange glow. It is those eyes she has always dreamed of and now they’re here. She moves with experience, slow at first, never breaking the connection between their eyes. His hands grasp at her hips and pull her closer with every thrust, filling her completely.

Arya’s hand scratch down his chest, leaving welts without drawing blood, marking him as her own. He doesn’t complain, dare not protest lest the fantasy break. Her breath quickens when she begins moving faster, skin on skin, tilting her chin up in elation, mouth formed in a silent howl.

The wolf taming the bull.

 _Mine,_ she thinks as he comes under her. With a shudder, she too reaches her climax and collapses above him, bloody slick skin on hers, shining in dim firelight. He doesn’t move and she doesn’t either, letting the sweat cool with him still inside her body. Within minutes, she finds herself drifting off to sleep with her head resting on his clavicle, the rising and falling of his chest more soothing than she had ever imagined in her dreams.

 

She finally tells him, many nights together later, lying draped over his spent body and drawing errant circles on his chest with lazy fingers. 

"Your father was Robert Baratheon," she murmurs.

His body tenses under her. "No," he says flatly. Then, "How do you know?"

"I know the same way you know I'm right as soon as the words left my lips. He is there every time you glance at your reflection or wield a hammer."

"I'm not the only bastard with black hair and blue eyes in Westeros," Gendry tells her defiantly.

"What about in King's Landing? Was there only one bastard there? Was everyone else trained by a smith, paid by an unknown lord? Was everyone visited by the King's Hand? Was everyone ushered out of the city as soon as the lioness began hunting down stags?"

He moves to rise but she squeezes her legs and stays his hips. Sinking back into the mattress, Gendry is quiet, his jaw clenched so tight she's surprised his teeth haven't shattered yet. Arya grazes her lips over the muscles in his jowl gently, prompting him to say, "Still a bastard."

She feels the heaviness of those words, sighing out of his throat, resounding in his chest. "Bastards, baseborn, highborn," she shrugs. "Valar Morghulis."

His large hands roam her back, feeling each dimple and exploring every bone, running twice over the scars. "Would the princess of Winterfell prefer a bastard or a knight?"

"Winterfell has no princess. Winterfell has a queen, Sansa Stark."

"Don't jump around the question," he snaps, muscles taut.

She pushes up off him until she can meet his eyes. "I only want Gendry."

"Wouldn't be proper," he countered.

She only laughs a sound dry like withered leaves and lowers her head. "Proper," she whispers into the crevice of his neck. "Is chopping heads and slitting throats proper? Is bedding sailors and whores proper? Is speaking to dragons and riding direwolves proper?"

He has no answer at first, then, “And what would your Khaleesi say to the head of her Queensguard being with a bastard?”

“The Khaleesi wouldn’t care,” Arya tells him. “And I don’t mean to marry you regardless. None of the guard commits to anything other than her.”

“Then why are you with me?”

Arya’s grey eyes are amused as she says, “Because none of the men or women in Braavos ever fucked me like you. Because in Queen’s Landing, they shiver at my name and only approach me with their heads bent and knees touched to the ground, and here you hold your head high when you see me waiting in the forge. Because when I disappeared, you were the only one who asked about me. Because when I knocked you over, you didn’t hesitate to knock me right back. Because none of the others are home, not even Sansa or Jon Targaryen or Rickon and Shaggydog, but you are. That’s why I’m with you, Ser Gendry Waters of Hollow Hill, bastard of Robert Baratheon, and that’s why no force in the world will ever drag me away.”

She doesn’t have to look at him to feel the smile spreading over his face. But she does anyway.

 

In the songs about the Khaleesi and her two consorts, they describe the glorious Dragon’s Reign and they sing of her- the young Stark daughter. In the books about the defeat of the Others and the heroes and heroines, they will write of her, the untamed she-wolf. Not of her father or her mother, not the lions and the stags, but of her. They speak of her courage and her silver tongue, her beast and her sword, her time in Braavos and her time in Westeros, of her wild unbrushed mane and her lover, the blacksmith.

They do not sing that he is a bastard, only that she loved him until her dying breath.


End file.
